to Grosseto. The ruins are now thickly overgrown with brushwood; but the walls, nearly 2 m. in circumference, are in places well preserved. They consist of large unworked blocks of a travertine which naturally splits into roughly rectangular blocks; these are quite irregular, and often as much as 9 ft. long by 4 ft. wide: in the interstices smaller pieces are inserted. The walls are embanking walls, with a low breastwork in places. Within the circuit which they enclose, now under cultivation, are two summits, one occupied by a Roman amphitheatre [the other by a tower (?) of uncertain date]: a Roman cistern also is visible. Some 2 m. S.S.W. are modern baths, fed by hot springs, which were in use in Roman times also, as the discovery of remains of Roman buildings shows.
See G. Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (London, 1883), ii. 222.
(T. As.)
Rush, Benjamin (1745–1813), American physician, was born in Byberry township, near Philadelphia, on a homestead founded by his grandfather, a Quaker gunsmith, who had followed Penn from England in 1683. In 1760 he graduated at Princeton. After serving an apprenticeship of six years with a doctor in Philadelphia, he went for two years to Edinburgh, where he attached himself chiefly to William Cullen. He took his M.D. degree there in 1768, spent a year more in the hospitals of London and Paris, and began practice in Philadelphia at the age of twenty-four, undertaking at the same time the chemistry class at the Philadelphia medical college. He was a friend of Franklin, a member of Congress for the state of Pennsylvania in 1776, and one of those who signed the Declaration of Independence the same year. He had already written on the Test Laws, “ Sermons to the Rich,” and on negro slavery; and in 1774 he started along with James Pemberton the first anti-slavery society in America, and was its secretary for many years. In 1787 he was a member of the Pennsylvania convention which adopted the Federal constitution, and thereafter he retired from public life, and gave himself up wholly to medical practice. In 1789 he exchanged his chemistry lectureship for that of the theory and practice of physic; and when the medical college, which he had helped to found, was absorbed by the university of Pennsylvania in 1791 he became professor of the institutes of medicine and of clinical practice, succeeding in 1796 to the chair of the theory and practice of medicine. He gained great credit when the yellow fever devastated Philadelphia. in 1793, by his assiduity in visiting the sick, and by his bold and apparently successful treatment of the disease by bloodletting. He died in Philadelphia on the 19th of April 1813, after a five days’ illness from typhus fever. His son Richard is separately noticed. Another son, James (1786-1869), was a physician, and author of various books, such as Philosophy of the Human Voice (1827) and Analysis of the Human Intellect (1865).
Benjamin Rush's writings covered an immense range of subjects, including language, the study of Latin and Greek, the moral faculty, capital punishment, medicine among the American Indians, maple sugar, the blackness of the negro, the cause of animal life, tobacco smoking, spirit drinking, as well as many more strictly professional topics. His last work was an elaborate treatise on the Diseases of the Mind (1812). He is best known by the five volumes of Medical Inquiries and Observations, which he brought out at intervals from 1789 to 1798 (two later editions revised by the author).
See eulogy by his friend Dr David Hosack (Essays, i., New York, 1824), with biographical details taken from a letter of Rush to President John Adams; also references in the works of Thacker, Gross and Bowditch on the history of medicine in America. His part in the yellow fever controversies is indicated by La Roche (Yellow Fever in Philadelphia from 1699 to 1854, 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1855) and by Bancroft (Essay on the Yellow Fever, London, 1811). His services as an abolitionist pioneer are recorded in Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade.
RUSH, RICHARD (1780–1859), American statesman and
diplomatist, son of Dr Benjamin Rush, was born in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, on the 29th of August 1780 He graduated at
Princeton in 1797, and was admitted to the bar in 1800. He
was attorney-general of Pennsylvania in 1811, comptroller of
the treasury of the United States in 1811-14, attorney general
in the cabinet of President James Madison in 1814–17,
acting secretary of state from March to September 1817, minister.
to Great Britain in 1817–25, secretary of the treasury in the
cabinet of President J. Q. Adams in 1825–29, and candidate for
vice-president on the Adams ticket in 1828. In 1818, while
minister to Great Britain, he, in association with Albert Gallatin,
concluded with British plenipotentiaries the important treaty
which determined the boundary line between the United States
and Canada from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains
and provided for the joint occupation of Oregon for ten
years. He also conducted the negotiations with Canning in
1823 relating to the S. American policy of the Holy Alliance.
He followed the Adams-Clay faction of the Democratic-Republican
party in the split of 1825–28, but returned to
the Democratic party about 1834 on the bank issue. In 1835
he and Benjamin C. Howard, of Baltimore, Maryland, were
sent by President Jackson to prevent an outbreak of hostilities
in the Ohio-Michigan boundary dispute. In 1836–38 Rush was
commissioner to receive the Smithson legacy (see Smithsonian Institution), and in 1847–49 he was minister to France.
He died at Philadelphia on the goth of July 1859.
He published A Narrative of a Residence at the Court of London from 1817 to 1825 (2 vols., 1833–45; all editions after the first edition of the 1st volume are entitled Memoranda of a Residence, &c.); Washington in Domestic Life (1857), compiled from letters written by Washington to his private secretary in 1790–98; and Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic and Miscellaneous (1860); and while attorney-general he suggested the plan for the compilation, Laws of the Nation (5 vols., 1815), edited by, John B. Colvin.
RUSH. Under the name of rush or rushes, the stalks, or hollow stem-like leaves of several plants have minor industrial applications. The common rushes (species of Juncus; see Juncaceae) are used in many parts of the world for chair bottoms, mats and basket-work, and the pith serves as wicks in open oil-lamps and for tallow candles-whence rush light. The fibrous stems and leaves of the bulrush or reed-mace, Typha augustifolia, are used in N. India for ropes, mats and baskets. Scirpus and other Cyperaceae are used for chair-bottoms, mats and thatch; the rush mats of Madras are made from a species of Cyperus. The sweet-rush, yielding essential oil, is a grass, Andropogon Schoenanthus, known also as lemon grass. Large quantities of the “ horse-tail,” Equisetum hiemale, are used the name of Dutch or scouring rush for scouring metal and other hard surfaces on account of the large proportion of silica the plant contains. Flowering rush is Butornus umbellatu (see Alismaceae); wood-rush is the common name for Luzula (see Juncaceae). Acorus Calamus, sweet-flag, is also known as sweet-rush.
RUSHDEN, an urban district in the E. parliamentary division of Northamptonshire, England, 66 m. N.N.W. from London by the Midland railway. Pop. (1901) 12,453. The church of St Mary is a fine cruciform building with western tower and spire. It is mainly decorated, with perpendicular additions, but retains some Early English details. The growth of Rushden as a town is modern. The industrial population is employed in boot and shoe making, the local staple.
RUSHWORTH, JOHN (c. 1612–1690), the compiler of the Historical Collections commonly described by his name, was the son of Lawrence Rushworth of Acklington Park, Warkworth, Northumberland. When he was given the degree of M.A. at Oxfordin 1649, he was said to belong to Queen's College, but there are no traces of his presence at the university. He was bred to the law, and in 1638 was appointed solicitor, to the town of Berwick. He was enrolled in Lincoln's Inn in 1641, and was called to the bar in 1647. He made a point of attending on all public occasions of a political and judicial character, such as proceedings before the Star Chamberor the Council, and of making shorthand notes of them. On the 25th of April 1640 he was appointed an assistant clerk to the, House of Commons. He was on duty when King Charles I. came down to arrest the five members on the 4th of January 1642, and made notes of his speech. The king insisted on taking thenotes, and ordered them to be published. Rushworth
